Model Focus of the Week is Nature Centric Models
First question is what do these models look like?
For me it involves focusing on nature and the value it brings to education. The other term that comes up for this model is called ecocentrism. Which is focused on values of the ecosystem, environment, and education for sustainable development.
Broaden my Perspective
This podcast goes into depth about the changes in the school systems to start using a nature centric model to broaden our would view and to incorporate multiple perspectives of nature and that there is no wrong answer.
The other podcast is Earthy Chats from the outdoor learning store and collaboration with the Colombia Basin Environmental Education Network.
The episode I listened to was Episode 9: Messy Maths and Dirty Teaching. https://outdoorlearningstore.com/podcast/
They talk about why not as many teachers are going outside even of the resources are there. One of the speakers was from Scotland and talked about the process you must go through just to get the children outside then to get them focused on the lesson for the day because students di not know how to focus outside and how to act. One quote from the podcast is “we are taking the children to their recess classroom, so they do not know how to focus in an outdoor classroom yet.”
I resonate to this quote because it is true with most classrooms. Especially in an urbanized school environment. When I worked in an urbanized school in 2021 the children did not know how to behave in gym class that was outside. Most of the children do not listen to the teacher because that location is where they have recess. So, they can not focus. The main thing I take away from this situation is that we need to teach the new generation of children to have an outdoor classroom and to be able to focus on a lesson while outside. This is a learned skill, and it takes time.
For example, with the math lesson I did in the community forest. This would not be the first lesson about shapes and angles. This would be an extra lesson for the students to show that they listened in class and know what they are working towards in the outdoor classroom.
Subject Focus of the Week is Math
How I achieved that is by observing my environment in the community forest and how math can be incorporated outdoors. My first thought was how to find angles and shapes around the classroom or outdoor learning space. By finding and creating shapes and angles around the natural space. There are apps and websites that can allow yourself or students to take photos through a device with a camera and edit the photo by finding angels in the photo. Another way to create shapes through nature from looking at a photo or the area around you make note of the shapes in the area and create them through windows or if you want to stay out in nature bring a clip board and draw shapes and relate them to the outdoors and make it a scavenger hunt for the elementary level children.
Reflecting on the lesson I came up with it would take time for the children to be able to focus on the task at hand and to make the lesson enjoyable for both the students and teacher takes time. I feel with more educators wanting to go outside and teach outdoors the transition of teaching is possible in the urban environments as well. We need the mindset that it is a process to get to the end objective which is to teach outside with out issues from the students being able to focus on a new environment.
